• Can you help me out here?

  25/01/2013

  I’ve been asked quite a few times this week for help. However I need you to help me out first before I can decide what to say or do.

  The thing is, people keep saying to me that they want to learn how to do the online thing better in a church context. After I posted that piece about 8 Things the Churches Can Learn from the Collapse of HMV last week that really stepped up. Indeed nothing I’ve written has been retweeted, shared on Facebook or passed around more for months.

  The thing is, I know that you can help a church congregation to grow by using the internet well. I know I’ve a lot to learn but I also know that I’m just ahead of the curve on this and able to see slightly further over the horizon than most people. It isn’t magic glasses that make me able to do this, it is because I’ve had an interest in communication techniques for a long time, a background in IT and I’ve done a wee bit of mission work with congregations. My recent sabbatical also gave me some time to think. I’m also aware that what I’m writing about has something to say to campaign groups, community organisers and other assorted politicos. I write in my context. You read in yours and I don’t forget it.

  I’m happy to write more about all that and it seems to be something that quite a lot of people want to hear about. Indeed, I’ve almost begun to think that I should start up a different blog just devoted to that topic. Would that be a good idea?

  If I’m going to write more though I need your help. What exactly do you want me to write about? Oh I know that you’d like me to offer you a free magic wand that would fill a church with nice unthreatening people who happened to glimpse on a website that there might be a church in the area. However, you know and I know that isn’t going to happen.

  Help me out here. What aspects of this do you want me to address a bit more? Is there anything you are aware of me doing online well that you’d like to hear more about. Or even better, is there anything I’m not doing I could try or anything I could try to do better?

  I’m aware of an outstanding comment from a few days ago asking for a bit more gen on posting sermons online.

  What else would you like?

  church, growth, mission, online

Previous Posts

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  17/11/2004

  As part of what I want to say tonight, I want to reflect o­n the year that has gone by. It has been a particularly busy year at St Saviour?s. The numbers of people coming to services was up o­n last year?s figures. Now, there are always particular factors which can affect numbers ? the…

• Parking Defender

  16/11/2004

  I do weary of having to defend the parking spaces outside the church from schemes to “improve” the road junction. Having just managed to save enough space for hearses and wedding cars a couple of months ago, there is now a plan to put a bus stop next to the west wall of the church,…

• Chalkegate

  15/11/2004

  There has been more than enough said about schism in the Anglican Communion recently. What has gone mostly unreported is a very similar schism in the Evangelical Alliance. It is not over sexuality but over doctrine (natch). However, the nub of the argument is very similar to the one going on within Anglicansim. Here is…

• Sermon – 14 November 2004

  14/11/2004

  As I was thinking about what to say this Remembrance Sunday morning, I was thinking back to some of the things that I remember saying a year ago. I never thought when I was preparing for ministry and thinking about Remembrance Sunday services that the time would come when I was leading this kind of…